Open Collections

An analytical comparison of foxes within European and Japanese beast tales

University of British Columbia

The use of foxes as a trickster figure is a common motif in cultures around the world, with two prominent manifestations being Reynard the Fox – the villainous protagonist of the Reynard Cycle from medieval and Early Modern Europe, and the kitsune – multiple-tailed supernatural foxes from Japanese folklore, literature, and mythology. 19th and early-to-mid 20th century scholarship utilized dated methodologies of formalism and structuralism, leading to comparisons of superficial similarities and speculations of a common origin. This thesis offers an analysis of both the Reynard Cycle and Japanese kitsune narratives utilizing methodologies drawn from both anthrozoology and cultural-historical analysis. I argue that the character of Reynard did not so much shape medieval European attitudes on foxes as he was shaped by pre-existing prejudices refracted through contemporary political concerns. In contrast, the kitsune of Japan encompass both secular and spiritual narratives, with their roles ranging from serving as moralistic – if sexist – warnings about women who did not conform to their social norms, to servants of Inari – the deity of commerce and agriculture, to the stars of tragic romances and vengeful plots to sow destruction and chaos. The thesis concludes by evaluating the two methodologies in relation to the two corpora.

Text

2020-10-15

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/76288

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/